What New Stealth Fighter Says About China's Rise

China, in an event symbolic of its push for rapid military
modernization, has rolled out the J-20, the country's first stealth jet
fighter. Only the U.S. and Russian air forces possess operational
stealth fighters. China's military is showing off the J-20 in public
test flights that have attracted, perhaps as hoped, the close attention
of media outlets across the Pacific. Though U.S. analysts and reporters
agree that the J-20 tests signal China's determination to develop the ability
to project "world power" class military force, they differ on the
extent to which China has reached that goal or will be able to do so in
the near future . However, analysts largely downplay concerns that this
signals a Chinese "threat" to U.S. military hegemony. Here's what they
have to say.

'New Policy of Deterrence' The New York Times' Michael Wines and Edward Wong
write that "some analysts say the timing is no coincidence," and that the Chinese "'want to show the U.S., show Mr. Gates, their muscle.' These days, there is more muscle to show. A decade of
aggressive modernization of China’s once creaky military is beginning to
bear fruit, and both the Pentagon and China’s Asian neighbors are
increasingly taking notice."

China Still 20+ Years Behind U.S. and Russia RIA Novosti's Ilya Kramni writes,
"Since the 1970s, China has consistently lagged 15 to 20 years behind
the world leaders in aircraft manufacturing. This was true of their
third- and fourth-generation aircraft, and this appears to be the case
with its fifth-generation fighter plane." The U.S. equivalent, for
example, was first built 20 years ago, and the J-20 is still at least 10
years away from production. "Despite the strides made by China's
aircraft designers in the last 20 years, China has only slightly
narrowed the technological gap dividing it from the global leaders."

Shows U.S. Shouldn't Lower Defense Spending "China has a long way to go before it approaches parity with the U.S.," Commentary's Max Boot explains--"but then again, it doesn't need parity. Much of our military spending
goes to enable operations thousands of miles from home. China, by
contrast, seems to lack global ambitions, at least for the moment. It is
concerned with dominating its region. And that does not require that it
match U.S. military capacity across the board. All it has to do is
raise the cost to the U.S. of taking action to keep in check Chinese
expansionism, whereas the U.S. must worry not only about the threat from
China but also about North Korea, Iran, al-Qaeda, Somalia, Yemen, and
myriad other concerns."

Only Has 1.5 of 11 Required Elements Military aviation analyst Richard Aboulafia tells Defense Tech
that there are 11 essential elements for an effective stealth jet
fighter. The J-20 offers one item from this list (#7). I'm not
convinced that the PLAAF has any other items from this list, although
China seems to be making some progress with #9." Here's number seven:
"An airframe with low-observable characteristics." And number nine:
"Sophisticated and reliable precision guided weaponry."

J-20 Less Important Than Military Proficiency Wired's Spencer Ackerman cites
Navy intelligence chief Vice Adm. Jack Dorsett in writing, "Looking at
China's new military hardware misses the broader picture. The real issue
is how well all the different Chinese military elements knit together,
much as the U.S.’s do. 'I don’t see China with those capabilities right
now,' Dorsett says. 'I see them delivering individual components,
individual weapons systems, those things are being developed. But until
they acquire that proficiency, the question is how competent are they
going to be.'"

China's Long-Term Intent Still Unclear The Center for New American Security's Abraham Denmark tells the New York Times,
"When we talk about a threat, it's a combination of capabilities and
intentions. ... The capabilities are becoming more and more clearly
defined, and they’re more and more clearly targeted at limiting American
abilities to project military power into the western Pacific." However,
"What’s unclear to us is the intent. China's military modernization is
certainly their right. What others question is how that military power
is going to be used."

Proves China's Potential for Military Innovation Aviation Week's Bill Sweetman says
the J-20 should belie "the idea that Communists are unimaginative
bureaucrats who can't innovate their way out of a wet paper bag. ...
China's military engineers and planners have unintentionally reinforced
this image over the decades, preferring to upgrade Soviet-era systems
rather than developing new platforms. But that tends to obscure the fact
that (to take one example) the latest version of the HQ-2 surface-to-air missile
bears only an external resemblance to the Soviet V-750." However,
"Since the current military modernization started, new [Chinese] weapons
have been increasingly innovative."